“The ten years have passed, and I was with my brothers on my way to her to have the spell lifted, when I met this man, together with this old man with the deer.”
“That story is nothing compared to the story of the Merchant and the Peasants”, said one of the dogs. Everyone was shocked and amazed to hear words coming out of a dog, but they were curious as to what the dog had to say nonetheless. The dog proceeded to tell the story:
In the village of Ancapajan, there was an immensely wealthy merchant who lived in a huge palace right in the middle of of the village that primarily consisted of straw huts where the common folk lived. He was even richer than the king, who virtually had no power in the village. The merchant was seen as the ruling authority in Ancapajan. He regularly had the common folk do hard labor to improve his land while paying them with the bare minimum of food they needed to survive. There was one peasant who was fed up with this way of living, and wanted to seize the Merchants wealth and redistribute it to everyone in the village. He arranged a meeting for every other peasant to join. His words resonated with the people, and they constructed a plan to seize the Merchant’s wealth.
It was night time, and the people where approaching the Merchant’s palace. They entered his front lawn and were making their way to his front door. They could hear the Merchant drunkenly singing while plucking a disrespected lute with a young laugh in the background. This only increased the hunger felt in the stomach of every peasant. They burst through the doors and almost dropped to the floor when they saw the insides of the palace. They quickly reminded themselves why they were here, and started to ransack the house. “You savages and leeches! I worked for this! I created this myself!”, he yelled. He then tripped over his own feet while trying to go after the peasants and spilled wine on the floors that one of his maids meticulously cleaned last night. The peasants somehow managed to start a fire in the palace, and were rushing to get out. The merchant barely made it out of there. The peasants enjoyed their spoils for a few days until the food ran out. One peasants was pitiful enough to give the merchant turned peasant the bare minimum of food he needed to survive each day. He had lost his wealthy look and looked just like the rest of the peasants. The former merchant was fed up with this way of living, and called a meeting for everyone in the village except the king.
With the merchant’s downward spiral to peasantry, the King of the village now assumed power. He now became the richest man in Ancapajan and soon a symbol of greed, corruption, and the wealth inequality present in the world. The merchant, disgusted at his current plight as a peasant, suddenly became humble and empathized with the other peasants. In turn, the peasants accepted the humbled merchant and saw him as an ally. More importantly, however, the merchant and the peasants were united against a common enemy, the King. The merchant and the peasants frequently passed time by listing their grievances against the King; they even had slight quarrels and did not agree on how ruthless and evil the King had become. They eventually called a meeting to discuss a plan to make the King suffer the same fate as the merchant.
Time passed, and the King became even more aggressive, demanding the peasants work longer hours and give up a larger portion of their crops as a tax. The day finally came when the merchant and the peasants acted upon their plan. They pillaged the King’s palace and stole his prized possessions. The peasants captured the King, tied him up, and slayed his throat. Once they triple checked to make sure there were no more valuables in the palace, they called upon the merchant to burn the palace to the ground.
Instead, however, the merchant smiled and spoke “You are all fools! Did you really think that I, a merchant of such high class, would actually empathize with commoners like you?”. Suddenly, half the peasants, coerced by the merchant, killed the other half. The merchant now claimed his throne as the King of Ancapajan. The peasants who pledged loyalty to him were his nobles and split the treasures of the former king among themselves. As they were cleaning the bodies of the dead peasants, the merchant smirked “Oh how the common man is easily fooled.”
The former merchant looked over all the peasants and began his story:
There was once a little boy who came from nothing. He lived in a poor village and every year the kingdom’s army would take all the men who were fit to fight to join the army. The little boy wished for adventure. He wished to find a country where the people were all happy. The boy stayed at the poor village taking care of his sickly mother. Years past and his mother’s health got worse. One day, upon her death bed, she said to her son, “You must leave. You must go out to the world because you were destined for more.” Her son, now young man, took those words to heart. Tears rolled down his face as his mother let out her last breath. The young man set out from the village knowing he could never return to this country. As he traveled from kingdom to kingdom, he saw that no country was safe from poverty. He began to see that there was no place like he had dreamed of. There was no place where all the people were happy. But this did not stop the young man. Everywhere he went, he saw the misfortunes of many and how corrupt nobles and merchants have taken advantage of that. He began to punish these corrupt nobles and merchants by stealing their riches and handing it out to the poor. As he continued his journey, he grew more wealthy. But with wealth, he still could not find the place he had hoped for. On to his next destination, he came upon a small cavern. He walked in to find a demon. The young man tried to escape but the demon grabbed hold of him. The demon said, “You are destined for more. You have quite an interesting look in your eyes. If I stay with you I may be entertained. Come now, we will build a new kingdom across the seas.”